The United States is witnessing a drastic redefinition of the policies and practices associated with “public education.” Discussions around the future of public education are strong on passion but short on actual evidence. We are establishing an open venue- a true public forum to debate controversial and consequential policy issues that will shape American’s future, and welcome you to the conversation.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Performance-based funding has become a buzzword in American
higher education, particularly among foundations and state policy makers. State
legislators, anticipating significant reductions in budgets, have reduced
budgets for higher education, often across the board, regardless of institution
type. Often cited as a means for maximizing the investment into institutions of
higher education, this funding mechanism keeps funding at a set level but
requires institutions to meet certain benchmarks in order to receive full
funding.

What is
performance-based funding?

Performance-based funding consists of an established formula
by which an institution operates in order to receive funding, largely based
on “the output-side of universities and colleges. Funding then is tied to
the ‘products’ of the teaching and research activities of higher education
institutions.” Outputs typically consist of variables such as credits awarded,
retention and graduation rates, employment outcomes of graduates, and research
production of institutions. Most prominently, it is the production of
credentials that drives recent discussions on performance-based funding, as states,
funding
agencies, and even the federal
government emphasize a ‘completion agenda’ fixated on credentialing more
students, and reducing the time-to-degree. (Note: the links provided are only a
few examples. There are many others.)

Although performance-based funding is nothing new, it has
been emerging as an alternative method for funding institutions, particularly
within higher education, compared to a more traditional model of funding. Jongbloed
and Vossensteyn describe the traditional approach as “a negotiations-based
approach, in which a budget request drawn up by an institution is decided upon
after negotiations between the budget authorities and the higher education institution.”
Typically at the fore of these negotiations are the inputs of higher education
institutions: enrollments, demographics, and academic preparation. While an
institution’s performance may be cited during the negotiation process, the
funding is decided based on an institution’s budget and the negotiated funding.
In recent years, this has presented an issue, as some states have struggled to
come up with promised funding. My state, Illinois, is no exception. There are
several times the state underpaid
its agreed-upon funding (also here
and here).

Where is
performance-based funding being used and discussed?

According to the National
Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), 10
states have some sort of performance-based funding in place, with five more
states in the process of transitioning to that sort of funding mechanism. 18
states have had formal legislative discussions around the use of
performance-based funding in higher education, though no formal policies have
yet been developed. Many of the 10 states with current performance-based
funding measures have done so only recently, having passed legislation or
implemented policies in 2011 or later.

One thing that seems prominent among most of these states is
that performance-based funding accounts for a small percentage of total funding
to institutions. In Tennessee, where performance-based funding can be traced
back to the 1970s, having such a small level of funding contingent upon institutions’
production goals had no
discernible impact. As a result, the state began moving toward using a much
larger proportion of funding as part of the performance-based metrics. Kysie
Miao, from the Center for American Progress, also emphasized
that “enough of an institution’s funding should be determined by
performance to compel actions that would significantly change institutional
behavior.” Jobs for the Future (JFF) published a
report in April 2012 to highlight the changing trend toward
performance-based funding through the case of Ohio’s implementation. In their
executive report, they suggest a number of recommendations for those
considering changes to their funding structure, including: consideration of
both educational progress in addition to college completion, taking into
account the institutions that focus on nontraditional students, and ensuring
the appropriate level of buy-in from key stakeholders.

It is no surprise that discussions of performance-based
funding have come up in my research with the Office of Community College Research and
Leadership (OCCRL), as two of the projects I work on revolve around
institutional and state policies that encourage production of more credentials
and helping students receive degrees in a timely way. In one such project,
where OCCRL provides the research component to the Credit When It’s Due (CWID)
initiative, funded by several foundations, states have received support to
produce reverse transfer degrees, wherein students who have transferred may
transfer credits back to a two-year institution in order to fulfill
requirements of an associate degree. Several of the states funded by this
initiative have indicated already-existing systems of performance-based funding
that could be further informed and refined using CWID policies.

There is little doubt that performance-based funding will
become one standard means in which state policy bodies encourage growth and
policy change of higher education institutions in the future. The overarching
suggestions from multiple reports and sources seem to suggest that performance-based
funding may be an effective means for encouraging the appropriate priorities
and foci in higher education, provided they are executed in a deliberate and
meaningful way. What is yet to be seen is how effective such funding mechanisms
can be, in large-scale implementation.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

“Autonomy” has become kind of a buzzword in recent
years. It’s treated with reverence by
charter school advocates…
almost as a panacea that will fix nearly any problems facing public schools. The belief is that, given greater autonomy,
schools are better able to sense and respond to families’ preferences for
schooling, and to the competitive incentives of the emerging education market.

This all sounds quite appealing, and makes sense in a lot of
ways. After all, school leaders are
indeed better positioned than are bureaucrats in faraway offices to understand
the needs of the local families they serve in areas such as curriculum, hours,
or allocating resources to various programs.
Especially in a choice system such as with charter schools, autonomy
allows school leaders to compete in shaping their services in ways that will
attract and retain students. And this is
particularly important if we want to provide an increased number of high
quality options for disadvantaged students trapped in failing public
schools. But, in responding to increasing
competition for students, do they use this autonomy to advance their school at
the expense of other important societal goals for public education?

Many school choice systems have been associated with
inequitable access, and segregative
patterns in many cases (also lookhere,here,here, andhere).
Much of the research on these patterns has focused on self-sorting —
such as “white flight” — by families as parents make school choices based on
social characteristics of students at a given school. Little attention has been paid to the role of
schools in shaping those patterns, even though, with the increasing importance
of choice and competition, many schools often have the autonomy to improve
equitable access for disadvantaged students.

To study this issue, we looked to the choice system in New
Zealand, where policymakers have been encouraging family choice of schools, and
school autonomy, since the “Tomorrow’s Schools” reforms
over two decades ago. By essentially
eradicating local education authorities, policymakers devolved power to schools
as autonomous, “self-managing” entities.
This has led to a system of comprehensive choice for families, and
considerable competition between schools for students, particularly in urban
areas. In Auckland, the largest city in
the country, upwards of one-third of traffic congestion is due to parents
shuffling their kids to the schools of their choice.

But, of course, schools have a finite amount of space. So, when a school has more applicants than
seats, it can implement an “enrolment scheme” to manage the demand, through measures
such as randomized “ballots” (lotteries), and/or specifying their own zones in
which residents have priority access to the school.

Previous research has shown that schools in more affluent
areas are more likely to be in greater demand, and thus more likely to have
enrolment schemes. The question we asked was whether these
self-managing schools were using their autonomy to draw their zones in order to
improve or restrict access for disadvantaged students. To do this, we simply compared the level of
affluence in a walkable radius around each school to the level of affluence in
the boundaries that the schools themselves had drawn. Certainly, school zones are not perfects
circles, as their creators have to consider traffic patterns, geographic
barriers, and the boundaries of competitors.
But, all things being equal, we could expect that deviations in those
boundaries from a geometric radius around a school would be more or less
equally likely to include or exclude more affluent neighborhoods.

But that is not what we
found. Instead, there is evidence of
rampant gerrymandering to exclude children from more disadvantaged neighborhoods. In the cases where there is a statistically
significant difference in the “deprivation level” of the population in a
school’s drawn zone compared to its immediate area, over three-quarters of
these self-managing school had drawn a zone that was significantly more
affluent than their immediate vicinity.

Moreover, as if to add insult to injury, more affluent
schools are not only drawing boundaries to keep poor kids out, but in their
promotional materials are bragging about their success in doing this. A review
of
school websites shows that more affluent schools are much more likely to
include official information about the number of disadvantaged students they
serve. In the US, this would be akin to
school leaders boasting about how few of their students are eligible for
free-reduced lunch.

While we might find these types of practices to be
distasteful for public schools that are funded by taxpayers to serve all
students, in some ways, such actions are predictable (if indefensible). After all, policymakers are creating
education markets where schools recognize competitive incentives to shape their
enrollments. It should be no surprise
that, given such autonomy and such incentives, they find creative ways to do
just that.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Today it is almost impossible to discuss college affordability without also considering the impact of affordability on the level of student indebtedness. This blog post considers recent data from the College Board and the Project on Student Debt about current student debt levels and offers links to relevant articles and policy proposals about student debt.

Figure 1 shows average total indebtedness of students who graduated with a bachelor’s degree from a public four-year institution. In 1999-2000, bachelor’s degree recipients had $11,100 on average in student loan debt. However, not all students take out loans and, in 1999-2000, 54% of bachelor’s graduates had debt. Of those with debt, the average borrower left school with $20,500 in student loans. By 2010-11, there was an increase in the average indebtedness of bachelor’s degree recipients such that the average debt level was $13,600. There also was an increase in the percentage of students who borrowed, which increased to 57%. Among bachelor’s degree recipients who borrowed, average indebtedness was $23,800 in 2010-11 – an increase of $3,300 of average debt since 1999-2000.

Figure 1: Average Total Debt
Levels of Bachelor’s Degree Recipients, Public Four-Year Colleges and
Universities, in 2011 Dollars, 1999-2000 to 2010-11

Source: The College Board, Trends in Student Aid 2012, Figure 12A

These average debt levels vary by state and Figure 2 shows average debt levels among students who have debt by state. In 2011, average debt levels ranged from a low of $17,227 in Utah to a high of $32,440 in New Hampshire. Twenty-two states had average debt levels over $25,000 and five states had average debt levels under $20,000. There is also variance in the percentage of graduates who have debt as shown in Figure 3. In 2011, Hawaii had the lowest percentage of graduates with debt (38%) and North Dakota had the highest (83%). Over 70% of students borrow in six states, but there is only one state (Hawaii) with fewer than 40% of students borrowing.

Figure 2: Average Debt
of Those with Loans, by State, Class of 2011

Source: Project on Student Debt (2012). NR = Not Reported.

Figure 3: Percentage of Graduates with
Debt, by State, Class of 2011

Source: Project on Student Debt (2012). NR = Not Reported.

These trends towards increasing both the number of borrowers and levels of indebtedness have made student debt an issue of public concern that both federal and state policy will need to address. The shift to the direct lending system has made it possible for all students to now opt-in to alternative repayment plans that can help to ensure manageable student loan debt levels for borrowers. However, more policy work needs to be done. For instance, eliminating the need to opt-in to alternative repayment options and making a repayment plan like the income contingent option the default option for all borrowers would help ensure that borrowers are able to manage their debt loads and are better able to avoid defaulting on their loans. In addition, the higher debt levels and larger student loan default rates of students who attend for-profit institutions needs to be addressed as a public policy issue (see for instance #10 on the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ Top 10 Higher Education State Policy Issues for 2013). Likewise, a new bill [H.R. 6674] introduced by Tom Petri (WI-R) in the U.S. House would enable the Internal Revenue Service to directly collect student loan payments. This idea has the potential to streamline the debt collection process, to lower the costs of loan servicing, and to provide borrowers with a reasonable way of avoiding student loan default. Allowing a tax collection agency to manage student debt repayment has been in operation in other countries for years. For instance, Australia has always used The Australian Taxation Office to collect debts from the Higher Education Contribution Scheme. A similar debt collection process deserves careful consideration in the United States. In addition, student loan debt does not impact all students equally and can constitute a special hardship for certain groups of students, such as those who drop out before completing their degrees. These special populations need particular attention in policy changes regarding student loans. Finally, the issue of student loans in bankruptcy needs to be addressed. Student loans are one of the few types of debt that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy and more consumer protections are needed. Overall, the need for thoughtful policy is pressing because the increased reliance on student loans coupled with the increase in student loan levels is already restricting educational access and limiting opportunity to learn for countless individuals.
By: Jennifer A. Delaney

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Currently
in the U.S., major educational reforms are being incentivized, which has
effectively created pressure to innovate.
For instance, Race to the Top,
a four-plus billion dollar federal competition sponsored by the U.S. Department
of Education, has been designed to advance major, specific policies across the
states(Race to the Top Fund, 2012). Related, a narrative of U.S. educational
crisis, whether or not it is overstated or dubious, continues to hold sway in many
circles. A crisis, real or manufactured,
presents opportunity for would-be reformers.
As such, some individuals and organizations may be advancing their policy
agendas by engaging media through individuals who possess little or no
educational expertise.

With
this in mind, we (Malin and Lubienski, in review) became interested in assessing
the relationship between expertise and media impact. To do so, we made use of
two educational expert lists (Hess, 2012; and Welner, Mathis, and Molnar, 2012). We treated educational press mentions, blog
mentions, and newspaper mentions in combination as a dependent variable
representing “media impact.” Likewise,
we treated four criteria— educational attainment, Google Scholar-listed
publications, book points, and highest Amazon rankings— in combination as an
independent variable measuring “expertise.”
We used linear regression to assess the strength and direction of relationships
between these variables.

When
these expert lists were combined, we found a non-significant positive
relationship between our measure of expertise and our measure of educational
impact (see figure below).When we constrained
our analysis to the NEPC list, however, expertise significantly predicted media
impact.

We
conclude that media impact is at best loosely related to expertise, which is
troubling and points to the responsibility of the media to vet experts before
citing them or their work.Certainly,
future research should be aimed at exploring and better understanding these
relationships.Perhaps most importantly,
we join the growing chorus of individuals who seek to re-establish tighter
relations between research, policy, and practice.Education is immensely important and policy
changes should be carefully discussed and weighed prior to implementation.This is most likely to occur when individuals
with educational expertise are positioned to inform the process.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

A few months ago, the Census Bureau released data based on a
relatively new, more sophisticated measure of poverty. The old
measure had been in place since the 1960’s and did not account for the
realities of today’s living expenses. The new measure considers housing,
medical, and child care costs and does a much better job adjusting for support
received through federal assistance programs. In areas with high costs of living like
California and Hawaii, the new measure classified substantially more residents
as poor, while the reverse was often true in areas with lower costs of
living.

This new measure is by no means perfect, and it certainly does
not do anything directly to help poor families in the U.S. But this
measure may allow policy analysts to better assess the needs of American
families and the relative effectiveness of safety net programs. The
change is solely on paper, but it is an important change nonetheless.

The K-12 education sector is long overdue for improvements in
how it routinely measures the social background of children. More often
than not, a student’s participation in the free and reduced school lunch
program and his or her LEP status are the only available indicators of family
background. Although additional indicators are sometimes collected for
research or special programs and assessments,
free/reduced lunch and LEP tend to be the only measures that are available for
all schools in regular enrollment data.

Free/reduced lunch is
a lousy indicator of socioeconomic status for a couple
of reasons. First, it classifies all students into just one of three
categories (free lunch, reduced lunch, no lunch support), losing valuable
detail in the process. With this approach, a family of four making
$28,000 per year will be indistinguishable from a family of four making $14,000
per year, as both would be classified as free lunch. Second, free/reduced
lunch is based on income primarily, and income by itself is not a very good
indicator of social class. In Class and Schools, Richard Rothstein points out how the use of income via
free/reduced lunch as the primary measure of socioeconomic status can lead to
the misrepresentation of some schools’ populations. One school that
was nationally recognized as being both high poverty and high performing was
actually a public school where many Harvard and MIT graduate students sent
their children. True, graduate students don’t make much money, but few
sociologists would regard this group as a high needs population.

Social scientists have used hundreds if not thousands of
different indicators to measure class and socioeconomic status, and the
measures will often vary depending on available data. However, a
handful of variables emerge more often than the rest, due to both availability
and their quality as predictors of outcomes in the social sector. If I had
to pick a single variable to add alongside family income, parental educational
attainment would be a good choice.
A common way of representing SES in richer datasets is to combine information
on income, parent education, and occupational status or occupational prestige (e.g.). While converting occupational status into a
number can be tricky, it’s a bit more straightforward for parental education
levels. In many cases, measures of parent education are even reduced to
maternal educational attainment due to the prevalence of single-parent
households. Thinking back to the Boston public school that enrolls the
children of Harvard and MIT Ph.D. students, it is easy to see how a combination
of income and parental education levels would give you a much more accurate sense
of the average socioeconomic status of some families.

I am not a lawyer, and I don’t know what legal justification the
feds or states would need to collect additional personal information from
parents; but, from a researcher’s perspective, the case is easy to
make. The link between social background and academic achievement is well
established, but the debate over the extent to which these links should
influence educational policy continues. Achievement gaps between
racial and socioeconomic groups remain large, and school segregation along
these lines may be getting worse. Meanwhile, wage, wealth, and income
inequality in the U.S. continues to worsen, as it has been doing since the mid
1970’s. In this context, there is substantial need for better measures of
students’ social background, particularly given the shortcomings of current
measures.

Moreover, the weaknesses of free/reduced lunch as a socioeconomic
indicator are not just an inconvenience for researchers these days. For
better or worse, many states and districts are now using statistical models to
influence the retention, tenure, and promotion decisions of teachers.
Better background variables on students may help improve these models.
With all of these factors in mind, one could make the case that looking beyond
free/reduced lunch is not only in the best interest of federal and state
departments of education but also that it is their responsibility to do
so.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase ‘teacher
evaluation’? Value-added
modeling? The Charlotte Danielson Framework
for Teaching? Chicago Public School teachers on
strike? Pay-for-performance? Without
a doubt, teacher evaluation is a contentious issue in public education today. The
Huffington
Post argued that teacher evaluation was a root cause of the Chicago Public
School teachers’ strike. Esteemed scholars, including, Diane Ravitch and Bruce Baker vocalize strong
opinions about the ways teacher evaluation should and should not be conducted
and used. President Obama touted the political rhetoric of teacher evaluation
in his 2012 State
of the Union Addressclaiming that schools need flexibility to implement
evaluation systems that “reward the best [teachers]” and “replace
teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.” Let’s face it – the issue of
teacher evaluation is not going anywhere anytime soon, and at the heart
of it all are three fundamental questions:

1) Why do we evaluate teachers?

2) How do we evaluate teachers?

3) What purposes do these evaluations serve?

Let’s look at an example. Newark,
NJ has a 62% graduation rate and over 90% of its graduates requiring
remedial English and math upon entering college. Yet, under the current teacher evaluation
system, 95% of its teachers are rated as “effective.” Something is not right
here. One problem might be the way the teachers are being evaluated. Another problem
might be the ways in which the other factors (like school conditions, home
life, and community) that affect a child’s behavior and performance at school
are taken into account in teacher evaluation. Yet, another issue might be that Newark’s
current evaluation system does not inform teacher professional development.
Simply put, teacher evaluation should help teachers improve their teaching; yet,
many times the methods by which we evaluate teachers do not provide information
that teachers can use to improve practice.

Drawing on recent attention in politics, research, and the
media and examining some high profile examples including Newark, New York City,
and Chicago, I plan to deliver a series of blogs over the next few months that discuss
the quarrelsome and interdependent issues underlying the necessity of
identifying “effective teachers.” First,
I will examine the question of why evaluate teachers, drawing on the political
rhetoric around teaching, public rights to accountability, and the assumptions
of teacher efficacy. Following, the merits and controversy of teacher
evaluation methods will be examined including value-added modeling,
observations, checklists, peer evaluation, and others. At the conclusion of the
series, the uses of teacher evaluation will be discussed, touching on issues of
merit pay, tenure, and teacher professional development.

Along the way, I welcome your questions, comments, critiques,
and stories of your own. What is your take on the fundamental issues underlying
teacher evaluation? How can teacher evaluation serve the needs of both teachers
and students? What matters and what doesn’t? Please join this conversation with
me!